The baking pan I used for the tart with these quantities is 9 inches, flared.

We will need two sheets of parchment paper

Dried legumes to use as weight on the shortcrust pastry for “blind baking”, i.e., without filling.

Plastic wrap

Food brush

Open star tip or other

1 piping bag

Let’s prepare the shortcrust pastry

Take the butter from the fridge, cut it into cubes, place it on a plate or bowl, cover it, and put it back in the fridge for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, prepare all the other ingredients. Weigh the rice flour and cornstarch and sift them together.

Let’s prepare the gluten-free shortcrust pastry

Take the butter out of the fridge 5 minutes before starting to knead.

After 5 minutes, place the butter in a wide, shallow bowl. Add the sifted flours, fine salt, very finely grated zest of a lemon or orange, and sugar.

Using your fingertips, very quickly work these dry ingredients with the butter to get a kind of crumbly and coarse mixture, like a very crumbled dough (photo 1), to be clear. It doesn’t matter if the butter is not perfectly combined; it shouldn’t be, otherwise, it will overheat.

Now we can add the egg yolks and the egg white (photo 2). On this note, I suggest adding the egg white gradually and only if it is difficult to combine all the ingredients, that is, if it is hard to incorporate all the flour (not all starches absorb liquids the same way).

Always knead quickly just to let the eggs be absorbed by the flour; the dough should still be firm. Again, it’s not important and not a mistake if the butter pieces are still visible, coarse.

On the work table, place a sheet of parchment paper, pour the dough onto it, cover with another sheet of parchment paper, and roll out the dough with a rolling pin (photo 3) more or less large enough to fit the chosen pan, without being too precise and with a thickness of at most 1/4 inch. Wrap the dough very well in plastic wrap and place it in the coldest part of the fridge for at least 12 hours.

The cold step for at least 12 hours is important as it stabilizes the dough, making it much more ‘elastic’, workable, if we can say so.

After this time, turn the oven on and preheat it to 392°F.

Take the dough out of the fridge and place it inside the chosen mold, helping yourself with the parchment paper around the pastry.

Even out the bottom, the side edges (photo 4), and eliminate the excess that protrudes from the mold (we will use it to make some cookies to bake simultaneously with the pastry or we can put it in the fridge). Also, in this step, you should touch the shortcrust pastry with your hands as little as possible, and be quick to prevent the butter from softening too much.

On the surface of the pastry, covered with parchment paper, place dry beans or chickpeas that will prevent the dough from inflating during cooking and then bake immediately, halfway up the already hot oven for about 30/35 minutes, static oven.

After about 25 minutes, remove the mold from the oven (make sure to use oven mitts and appropriate trivets), remove the parchment paper with the legumes, and continue cooking so that the surface can brown.

At the end of cooking, the shortcrust pastry should be evenly golden on both the bottom and surface.

Take it out of the oven and let it cool for at least 15 minutes before removing it from the mold to avoid breaking it (it is necessary to remove it from the mold to avoid condensation at the base that could moisten the pastry). Let it cool on a rack.

When the shortcrust pastry is completely cold, we can fill it

Coarsely chop the nuts together (photo 5); you can use whichever ones you prefer.

Then let’s take care of the apples. Wash them, peel them, cut them into chunks (photo 6), place them in a large bowl, and mix them with the nut mixture. Distribute the filling evenly inside the tart.

If the type of apples is too watery or if the tart is not consumed immediately but, for example, the next day, I highly recommend waterproofing it with chocolate (dark or white) just melted (photo 7), brushing the inside with a thin layer. Once the chocolate has dried, we can fill the tart that will not fear humidity. This operation should be done on the already cooked and cold tart.

Let’s take care of the decoration

Pour the liquid heavy cream into a mixer and start whipping it (one minute).

Then, add the cream cheese (dry, free of whey), powdered sugar, and flavors (vanilla and finely grated lemon zest) and continue whipping until we have a firm and puffy cream (about another minute).

Put the obtained cream in a piping bag and unleash your creativity. I decorated the tart with a 10 mm open star tip, creating a ‘basket’ pattern, and I add the tutorial link here. The tip used in the tutorial is different from the one I used, but the result was perfect from an aesthetic point of view.

We can complete the decoration with some nuts.

Enjoy your tart